Are you sabotaging your own productivity and leadership efforts? Here is a list of work habits that should be changed, whether they are demonstrated by you or someone on your staff. Let us know what else should be added to this list.

1. Accepting ambiguous meeting invites — Just say “no” to meeting invites that have no clear agenda or purpose, and don’t send out any either. It doesn’t just look clueless and unprofessional, but it also demonstrates a lack of understanding of who the needed decision makers are.
2. Feeding your addiction — Stop accompanying your laptop or crackberry, or worse — both, to every meeting. You can’t be fully present if you allow distractions. Remember, multitasking is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and definitely hurts your meeting’s productivity.
3. Continuously negating yourself — Stop starting sentences with “But”. It adds no value and negates everything you said up to that point.
4. Living a life of excuses — Excuses are an acknowledgment of failure. Excuses don’t deliver results. So, don’t let excuses and excusers run circles around you, and instead keep the focus on the goal, the desired results and how to get there.
5. Behaving as if the world revolves around you — Showing up to meetings late, regularly canceling meetings right before the start time, or forgetting to cancel them at all clearly indicates that you think your time is more valuable than anybody else’s. Don’t be so disrespectful!
6. Assuming your way through projects — Don’t assume, always validate. Remember what assume stands for: making an a** of u and me.
7. Overloading your emails — You want answers to your emails? Stop sending long emails that are loaded with questions. If you’re lucky, you”ll get back an answer to one of the questions, and it won’t be the one you really need…
8. Sharing with the world — Stop spamming everyone in the project and their cousins with irrelevant emails. Know your audience, limit it if necessary, and keep your communications focused.
9. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy — Relationships are key to getting work done. Get to know your staff, team, customers, … Take them out for a drink now and then.
10. Skimping on your promises — Your promise is your word. Your actions reflect on your personality, and show if you are deserving of trust (or not).
11. Overly simplifying complexity — Let’s face it, we live in a complex world where everything is connected. With that, managing white space is more important than ever. Don’t ignore it.

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